“This deeply researched book, full of human detail, is essentially a true-crime narrative, shedding light on the darkest, most troubling moment of the sixties counterculture and all that led up to it and followed from it. It is a riveting piece of documentary writing.” ―Morris Dickstein, author of Gates of Eden and Dancing in the Dark

"Rough, sickening, blasted, detailed. The focus on Meredith Hunter and his family is heroic." ―Greil Marcus

"Austerlitz has written the definitive account of this tumultuous moment in American music history." ―Ted Gioia, music historian and author of Delta Blues and The History of Jazz

"Austerlitz offers an evenhanded insight into all the players. Especially welcome is the full portrait of Meredith Hunter, the doomed young man trapped in the maelstrom." ―Andrew Grant Jackson, author of 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music

About Just a Shot Away

If Woodstock tied the ideals of the '60s together, Altamont unraveled them.

In Just a Shot Away, writer and critic Saul Austerlitz tells the story of “Woodstock West,” where the Rolling Stones hoped to end their 1969 American tour triumphantly with the help of the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and 300,000 fans. Instead the concert featured a harrowing series of disasters, starting with the concert’s haphazard planning. The bad acid kicked in early. The Hells Angels, hired to handle security, began to prey on the concertgoers. And not long after the Rolling Stones went on, an 18-year-old African-American named Meredith Hunter was stabbed by the Angels in front of the stage.

The show, and the Woodstock high, were over.

Austerlitz shows how Hunter’s death came to symbolize the end of an era while the trial of his accused murderer epitomized the racial tensions that still underlie America. He also finds a silver lining in the concert in how Rolling Stone’s coverage of it helped create a new form of music journalism, while the making of the movie about Altamont, Gimme Shelter, birthed new forms of documentary.

Using scores of new interviews with Paul Kantner, Jann Wenner, journalist John Burks, filmmaker Joan Churchill, and many members of the Rolling Stones' inner circle, as well as Meredith Hunter's family, Austerlitz shows that you can’t understand the ‘60s or rock and roll if you don’t come to grips with Altamont.